The practice of suspending brightly colored mobiles, balloons or toys over a baby crib to entertain an infant in the crib is well known.
Recent scientific research indicates that exposure of an infant to frequently changing visual stimuli from birth to three or more months will enhance the child's brain-cell development, stimulate the infant's visual perception, increase the child's attention span, and entertain the child for considerable periods of time without continuous adult supervision.
During the first six months of his or her life, an infant spends a lot of its time lying in a crib. For the infant to observe and be stimulated by brightly colored objects, the objects must be suspended from the ceiling of the nursery directly over the infant's crib. This method of exposing the infant to stimulating objects requires considerable effort and does not lend itself to frequent changes of the objects to be viewed by the infant.